What I learned by experiment with Google Adsense for 7 years

It has been my habit that I always experiment with new things and check what works well for me. During my decade long journey I experimented with different things and today I’ll discuss what experimentation with Google Adsense for more than 7 years taught me.

I’ll reveal what ads units, colors, style yielded me great results.

This post will help new bloggers learn how can they use different combinations of ad units of Google Adsense program to make maximum money off it.

They can leverage on findings of my experiment that I’ll share in this article and eliminate time they will otherwise spend (waste) experimenting with such things.

Moreover my experience and suggestions may help them to maximize their adsense earnings since day one.

Apart from being the most active in Internet Marketing and Tech niche, I’ve experimented with other niche websites as well and today in this post I’ll generalize my findings to all the niches.

In order to have better results, you must need to understand what makes visitors click the advertisements, you need to understand what ad format converts well, you need to analyze if image, text or video ad works well, you need to understand what font colors make visitors to click on the advertisement.

And trust me its lots to do !

To put it in more simpler way, It can be understood by relating it with physical convenient stores where once any customer enters, all the activities of that customer are monitored and then after research the store manager decides which items to placed at what location so that maximum number of units can be sold.

Here the work of a manager has been done by me and I’ll list down all the recommendation based on my experience.

During this years long tenure, I used different color combinations, formats, different ads positions on the website and what given me the best result is something I’m going to discuss in this article so that someone who just started wouldn’t need to waste its time experimenting with such things.

First of all, I’d like to tell the readers that Google Adsense is the most reliable and well paying program among all.

There are plenty of other alternatives of Google Adsense such as info links, Chitika but the CPC (Cost per Click) with Google Adsense is much better than other these.

Yes, this is the most interesting part that CPC with Google adsnese is quite good as compared to other programs.

The other thing which makes Google Adsense better than other is the choice of different formats (sizes, image/text/video ads) and selection of different font sizes and colors.

Moreover, sometime Google itself suggests changes in current ads arrangement to increase the income to certain percentage.

It might work for others but to be honest, I do not like to go with what Google suggests since it never worked for me (I use to make changes as per the recommendations).

Let’s take things one by one.

1) Ads location –

I’ve seen lots of people use software such as HEATMAP to keep watch on visitor’s click so that they could know where visitor clicks on the website.

They place ads at the same locations where maximum number of clicks are being made.

No doubt this is a great information and can be used for different analysis.

But, what I found is that this is good just for presentation purpose, it doesn’t work in real life (atleast not with Google Adsense).

You need to experiment with placing different ads units at various location and see which location performs the best.

Home page

My 7 + years of experimentation with ads location suggests, you shouldn’t place any ad unit on the home page, this is one thing and here is why..

It makes the website look spammy. I prefer (and it works) to keep home page neat and clean.

Moreover, since in general we promote post URL (whether its SEO or trying to drive traffic through social media), placing ads on the home page doesn’t make sense. The visitor will land directly to the post page via Search Engine or Social networking website (we hardly promote home page).

Inner pages –

Since Google Adsense program doesn’t allow us to place more than 3 ads blocks, the arrangement which worked well for me is depicted in below image (its an example of inner page not the home page).

2) Ads block combination

As I said we are allowed to place 3 ads blocks on the page, using one links ad at the very beginning and rest two text/display ads in the middle of the post works well.

I try to put all the ads in first half of the page for maximum ads exposure. Quick Adsense plugin does this job for me.

3) Ads block sizes

Link Ad – I experimented with different sizes and alignment on the post page. My study reveals that links ad of size 200 x 90px works pretty well.

Text/display ads or both- When it comes to the size of rest two image/text ads, out of all the sizes one with 336×280 ads block given me the best results.

This arrangement will automatically display either text or display ad to the user (based on several factors) to maximize clicks.

Additional suggestion– One can experiment with placing the links ads by putting the block at the end of the article. This arrangement too was giving me good results because when the user is done with reading whole article, there is great chances he/she clicks the ads being displayed at the end of the article as well.

4) Color Combinations

Links ads –

Background – I prefer to don’t show the background of ad links unit and match it with the background of the page. Keeping ads background color same as page color results in better yield.

Fonts – Here again selecting same fonts as theme of your website could earn you maximum clicks.

Text/display Ads or both –

Background – Since I’ve recommended to chose “text & display ads” at the time of creating ads unit, it will sometime display “display ads” and some other time “text ads“.

The background color we choose has no role to play when display ads appears on the webpage.

It only be used when text ads is displayed on the page. Set the background color same as page color.

Fonts – Same as what I’ve suggested for links ads

Font color – Same as what I’ve suggested for link ads

5) Alignment

I ran test by aligning the ads left, center and on the right side of a web page. When you chose to place links ads at the beginning of the article, make it center aligned along with rest two text/display ads.

However, if you decide to place links ads at the end of the article, I would recommend it to make left aligned while keeping rest two ads center aligned for better results.

Over to you – Its time to go ahead and experiment with such arraignments and hope to get good results. The internet is all about experimentation.

Sunil is the founder of Blogging an Art, Blogger & Internet Marketing Consultant. He likes to write about SEO, Affiliate marketing, Social media marketing, Email marketing and other related stuff. He is an active contributor at various tech blogs as well and loves to travel.

Hi Sunil, What a joy to be here today, What an amazing information you shared with this post. Though I am an account holder of Adsense for almost 7-8 years I am really surprised to note my meager earning and now i realized some vital facts where i missed. Thanks a lot Sunil for making this informative piece for your readers I just curated this wonderful post on the pages of Inbound and few other IM platforms Keep sharing Nice speaking to you May you have a great and prfitalbe day. Keep informed Best ~ {Philip

Always love to read the post which has a real potential with experience. 7 + years its really a big experience and shared honestly with excellent explanation. Recently Google launched page level ads can you share you experience on that, and I have not seen any AdSense ads in this blog, I guess might have on other blogs. Thanks !

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

About me

Besides being the founder of BloggingAnArt.com, I'm a Blogger & Internet Marketing Consultant. I've been active in Internet Marketing for about a decade and helped many businesses to grow their website traffic and sales multiple fold. Read more